Karl Ruprecht Kroenen
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen is a a character who appears in the Hellboy comic and film. Comic Dr. Kroenen was a German scientist employed by the SS. He always wore a gas masks due to an irrational fear of germs. A member of the Thule Society, he was also involved in Project Ragnarok as one of its top scientists. He worked closely with fellow Nazis Ilsa Hauptstein and Leopold Kurtz and was a faithful discipile of Grigori Rasputin. He was present during Rasputin's failed attempt to summon the Ogdru Jahad. He, Ilsa and Kurtz were frozen and later thawed after the war by Roderick Zinco on Rasputin's orders. He tried to create the Apocalypse Army, an army of robitically enhanced living corpses, and was able to persuade Zinco to retrieve the severed head of Herman von Klempt, his old colleague from Project Ragnarok, from South America. After he brought the head back to life, von Klempt tried to persuade Kroenen to abandon Rasputin's plan to summon the Ogdru Jahad and instead use the Apocalypse Army to retrieve his own work from South America. When Kurtz overheard, he became angry at von Klempt questioning Rasputin and attempted to attack the head, and was killed by Kroenen in retaliation. In the meantime, after the failure of their latest plan, an enraged Rasputin punished Zinco blind, which resulted in Zinco triggering their base's self-destruct sequence. Everyone was thought to have died in the blast, although Kroenen later turned up alive at a meeting alongside the apparently resurrected Leopold Kurtz. Film Obersturmbannführer Kroenen was a high-ranking SS officer and the head of the Thule Cult Society and Adolf Hitler's personal expert on all things occult. He was mentally deranged, which caused him to have a surgical obsession which caused him to physically modify himself, including cutting off his own eyelids and his lips, which necessitated the need for always wearing a gas mask to conceal his mutilated visage. He was also a highly skilled hand to hand fighter, using blades and sharpened silver batons to dispatch opponents. Towards the end of World War II, he was present during Grigori Rasputin's efforts to summon forth the Ogdru Jahad. When a group of American soldiers led by Professor Broom attacked, Kroenen defended the equipment being used to open the portal to the Ogdru Jahad's realm. When a grenade was thrown into the machinery, Kroenen's effort to retrieve it resulted in him losing his arm. He failed, and, when the grenade exploding, destroying the machine, it flung Kroenen away and impaled him, seemingly killing him. Years later, Kroenen was still living, kept alive through clockwork innards with sand and dust for blood. His missing arm had been replaced with a robotic one. He and his fellow SS officer Ilsa von Haupstein found and resurrected Rasputin, and Kroenen proved an able enforcer for Rasputin. In particular, he gained entry into a museum for them by engaging and killing all of the security guards, mortally wounded Agent Clay, and also killed Hellboy's adoptive father, Professor Broom, on Rasputin's orders. When Hellboy and his comrades infiltrated Rasputin's secret lair underneath a Russian cemetery, he fought Kroenen in a room with a spiked pit in the middle. He killed Kroenen by knocking him down into the pit and impaling him on the spikes, then dropping a huge, heavy gear down onto him, crushing him. Awards *Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross *SA Sports Badge (Bronze) *Golden Party Badge Notes *During the World War II sequence in the film, Kroenen's uniform is inaccurately depicted as the prewar all-black SS uniform instead of the correct wartime gray. *He is possibly based on the real Karl Ruprecht who was an Austrian, born on June 19, 1910 in Gratkorn and became a Nazi official and folklorist in 1934. Karl Kroenen.jpg KarlRuprechtKroenen.jpg hellboy-karl-kronen_480_poster.jpg Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Kroener, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, Karl Ruprecht Category:SA Sports Badge Winners Category:Golden Party Badge Category:Fictionalized Versions of Real People